Dennis Fox’s Weblog

1. This morning our FFIPP group took taxis from our Tel Aviv hotel to Jaffa, the adjoining ancient city now dwarfed by Israel’s urban center. We went to Jaffa, a mixed Jewish-Arab city, to go to the office of Re’ut/Sadaka (”Friendship”), a small organization running workshops, seminars, work camps, and other programs for Israeli Jewish and Israeli Palestinian youth. The photo shows a mural downstairs from their office in a small apartment, painted by one of their youth volunteers.

We spoke with the director, a Palestinian from the Israeli town of Tire, and with a staff person from Canada. Both seek to create a new form of interaction between Israel’s two communities: interaction based on equality. That’s not easy here, they say, where Jews and Arabs have different “historical narratives” and where equality is hard to come by; even in this “mixed” city, separation is common. Many Jewish groups, they explained, want to “help” the Arabs and to “co-exist” peacefully, but that doesn’t always translate to treating Arabs as equals. With both sides seeing themselves as victims, more traditional co-existence groups aim to boost friendship but don’t delve into history and expectations.

Re’ut/Sedaka goes directly for the difficult discussions — history, identity, equality. They teach about both the Holocaust and the Naqba (the Catastrophe of Palestinian dispersal upon Israel’s creation). They talked about the diversity within each community, with both Jews and Arabs varying widely in political perspective. We heard about Palestinians who reject “Arab” identity, who now are comfortable speaking Hebrew and having Jewish friends but who still aren’t equal.

The French Canadian staffer shares a full-time job with other staffers and thus also works as a waitress. When our meeting ended, she gave us directions to her restaurant in the old flea market area, and that’s where we headed to discover a pleasant cafe with great food. This is not the Jaffa of old. Hipness is in.

2. After lunch we headed back into Tel Aviv to meet with Courage to Refuse, the group of Israeli army reservists who sparked a movement three years ago to reject military service in the Occupied Territories. Over 600 combat veterans have now signed their public letter pledging not to serve in Occupied Territories. Many have already served short prison sentences for refusing to respond to call-ups, some of them more than once. Also at our meeting were three Icelandic union leaders, one of them a Green Party member of Iceland’s Parliament, on a tour to help advance Palestinian rights.

Courage to Refuse, inspired by the much older group Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit), has grown and now inspires similar actions, including recent refusal letters by elite air force pilots and army commandos. The members hope to spark more resistance, though they carefully define their motivations as consistent with Israeli security and their refusal as good for Israel. As they see it, Israel will be more secure, not less, once the Occupation is over.

Perhaps partly because they define themselves as Zionists and patriots, they differ from others whose primary concern is the damage done to Palestinians rather than damage done to Israel. Their insistence that a Jewish State is both necessary and potentially just and democratic, which sparked heated discussion about the definitions of terrorism and Zionism, may be necessary to work with an Israeli public unwilling to reassess basic assumptions, but it does make me wonder whether those who now oppose Occupation will continue to advocate equality for Arabs once the Occupation is over. Although I find nationalism and patriotism problematic in most circumstances, I think the Zionist terminology and identity is understandable historically and perhaps, as they said, useful in working in Israelis who might support refusal. Moving to abandon Zionism is a bigger step, one I’m not sure I would have been able to take myself if I had been living in Israel all these years.

The Courage to Refuse members we met were thoughtful and motivated. They’re dealing with difficult issues. I’d be happy to see them spark a stronger anti-Occupation movement and leave the Zionism question for later.

3. Tonight we had our final FFIPP meeting, a session with two former Israeli soldiers who created an exhibit of photos taken by soldiers who served mostly in Hebron. It was painful to hear not just their descriptions of what they say are routine incidents of dehumanizing Palestinians, but also their distress at not having challenged what they had to do while uniform. The authorities say the actions they describe are “exceptional.” The two tell us that isn’t true, and that journalists who know better are afraid to tell the truth. Their group is called Breaking the Silence.

The two-week FFIPP tour is now over, and my five weeks in Israel and Palestine are more than half over. Tomorrow I head south to revisit more of my past, first  to Kibbutz Hatzerim,

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 9th, 2005 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Israel/Palestine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.